Regarding #1: Watch Shark Tank. Some patterns begin to emerge if you watch enough shows. I'm in a class of sorts at the moment about startups and this question has come up. Basically, investors want to see evidence of "Product Market Fit", namely some decent level of sales to parties other than friends and family. If it's a website of some sort, they want to see 10k-20k monthly unique visitors.

A recent Investor panel stressed among the biggest pitfalls is not understanding the interests and business model of the investors or addressing competition and how you differentiate. Just wrote a blog post about this at JaniceMandel.com
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My company is lucky enough to be in Startup Next (check it out -cool program). And last night I heard the best advice I have ever heard about pitching (this was from the entrepreneur side, not the investor side), was to be authentic. Guessing what your audience wants is hard, but knowing what drives your passion and ingenuity is easy. Follow that and the right investors will emerge.

Obviously, you need to have a quality business idea, a quality team and the ability to pull it off, but authenticity is the real key - that was from a TechStars graduate that raised a boatload.

Laurelle Johnson, I totally agree and was going to recommend the same thing. The 10/20/30 rule is excellent. I also recommend taking a look at this article. The Founder Institute (of which I am a grad) specializes in fine tuning pitches. http://fi.co/posts/14661

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